21

“Have you ever been abroad?” Pellerin said.

“Two summers ago, we stayed at Mentone,” said Herbert.

“Did you like it?”

“Yes.” He was silent for a while. Then he said, “There was a girl there. She was with her mother. She seemed very proud.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“Oh, no,” said Herbert. He found the idea startling. “I would see her on the beach. She was older than I.”

This is the first time, thought Pellerin, that he has referred to the opposite sex. Had it, he wondered, any special significance?

“In what way was she proud?”

“When she saw me looking at her, she tossed her head in the air.”

“They do that,” said Pellerin, as if women were horses. “Would you like to go abroad again?”

Herbert turned a questioning gaze at him.

“An educational tour round Europe. Just the two of us.”

“Yes,” said Herbert, “I would. I would indeed.”

“I will ask your mother,” said Pellerin.

The idea had come to him furtively, a fragment of an idea at first; it was not there when he had asked himself what he was doing with Herbert, and if his brief lessons had any meaning for either of them. Yes, that was what he really would like to do, to take Herbert abroad “on an educational tour.” It would be an insult to Herbert, and to himself too, to expound the facts of life at Bezill in the prevailing circum­stances—the circumstances provided by his feelings towards Mrs Shakeshaft, and of the nature of her relationship to Gayfere, a relation­ship which sprang, he thought, from another relationship, that between herself and her recently deceased father whom, he gathered, she had abhorred. A love-­hate relationship in both cases, especially one of hate, as great a tie as love. No, no, there was no question of his telling Herbert about the facts of life—and of death, especially death, the death of the unborn child, so to speak—here at Bezill, or at any old place. No, their thoughts must be composed, and the longing of their respective hearts stilled—­his for Herbert’s adorable mother who was held in a clasp as cold as an ice lolly, and Herbert’s for the girl who tossed her head proudly when she observed him gazing at her, or for another perhaps. He foresaw himself pandering through the brothels of Europe (or at least through some of those that still existed in these reformed times and had not been shut down by governments alarmed at the new teaching), expounding to the poet Herbert by practice as well as precept the mysteries of sex. Geoffrey Pellerin was nothing if not thorough. But would Mrs Shakeshaft agree to it? He thought she would, especially if he found a suitable way of putting it. And by suitable, he meant a way which would compel her to agree, for nothing must be left to chance, to the whim of a cold, cold woman. The pro­posal, in other words, must fit into her own plans, if she had any. It was no good his thinking that, to succeed, he had only to create a situation in which she would want him out of the way, or then she would only dismiss him. No, he must bring her round to seeing that he was essential to her son—his health, his joy—if not to herself, and that his going away was only to return—at a time not too far distant when things would be different. But why did he want to go away? He turned over a letter he’d received that morning from Gladys, the usual kind of letter from her. She sent him news of the herbarium, of the addition of a new cure for asthma which Raymond had recently added to his list. It was made from a herb of the “Chinese Ephedra Tree: the remedy with a 4,000 years reputation,” to quote from the leaflet which she had enclosed. She invited him to spend Christmas with her. Now that you’ve gone away, I regret all the opportunities I’ve lost in being sweet to you. The letter fell from Pellerin’s hand on to the desk. Be assured, he felt like replying, you lost none. But the thought of so much sweetness lost persisted, and began to fascinate him. Should he go up to Mrs Shakeshaft—she was probably in her room at the moment—and tell her simply that he loved her too much to allow this mockery to continue. What mockery? Wasn’t it mainly in his own imagination? And if he burst in upon her, he’d only find Gayfere there, in a straight jacket, bound to the end of the bed, and Mrs Shakeshaft playing tennis in the alcove.

It would be easier to take Herbert to Pompeii and Heraculaneum and show him the frescoes which depict scenes of conjugal life; and to the Museum Eroticum Neapolitanum for phallic monuments and gimcracks. Yes, he must broaden Herbert’s mind, enlarge his education, lavish his heart with indefinable pride.